Monday photo feature

Mr. Bruce Poacher found his way into my Go Pro camera's field of vision out on the Columbia River the week before last.  Bruce, who lives in Erwin, Tennessee, handled those downwind conditions just like a guy who grew up in and around the coastal waters of South Africa.  But that's not really a surprise, seeing as how he is a guy who grew up in and around the coastal waters of South Africa.


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Treading water

First, a dispatch from the aches and pains department:

That wrist ailment that I mentioned just before I left for the Pacific Northwest has returned.  I'm not sure it ever truly left: regular doses of ibuprofen eased the pain, but once I laid off the ibuprofen it came back.  I suppose I could just keep on taking ibuprofen, but I don't think that's good for me to do so indefinitely.  So... hmm.

My upper-body muscles are a bit achy, probably from the work I've been doing in my woodworking shop.  The projects I have going now are not as imposing as that big table I finished several weeks ago, but the early stages of any project typically involve handling some big heavy planks as I cut out the rough-sized furniture parts.

Finally, just this morning I woke up with some pain in my left groin area.  I guess I strained it somehow, but have no idea how or when.

I was hoping that an easy few days here at home would have me rarin' to go after my week of intense paddling out in the Columbia Gorge.  But the woes listed above, along with the uncertainty of my upcoming race schedule, have me searching for motivation.  With the big races in Memphis and in the Pacific Northwest now behind me, my season appears in danger of fizzling out like it did last year, when all three events I'd wanted to do in September got called off.

In the meantime, I'm still going down to the river.  Yesterday I had a somewhat intense 90-minute paddle.  After warming up and doing three 8-stroke sprints in the harbor, I went out on the Mississippi and paddled a strong tempo down to the old bridges and back up along the Arkansas bank to the Hernando DeSoto Bridge.  Then, as I headed back toward the harbor, I saw an enormous barge rig, driven by two towboats, coming upriver.  I paddled down to check out its stern wake and found waves that were bigger than any of the swells I'd seen out on the Columbia.  I was paddling the V12 surf ski I usually train in--less stable than the V10 Sport I used in the Gorge--and when I started chasing runs I found myself struggling to do the hard sprinting required because of the tricky balance.  It was especially bad in the "zone of uncertainty" when the boat was perched atop a crest.  I was also tired, and I eventually gave it up and headed back into the harbor and returned to the dock with a vague feeling of defeat.

Today I went back downtown, warmed up and did three 8-strokers in the harbor, and then found no barge traffic on the river.  That was probably a good thing, because what I needed was a relaxed paddle with no agenda besides enjoying the nice day.


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Race schedule update

Here's what's left in my season that I'm aware of at this time.  I hope to get up to Cincinnati next weekend.  As for the flatwater nationals, I'm still unsure.  I'm waiting to hear from a registration official about whether I'll be allowed to register.


August
3  Ohio River Paddlefest.  Ohio River, Cincinnati, Ohio.  A 9-mile race on this Midwest artery.  Register

7-10  U.S. Flatwater Sprint National Championships.  Lake Lanier, Gainesville, Georgia.  A regatta to determine national champions in numerous boat classes and age groups over 200 meters, 500 meters, 1000 meters, and 5000 meters.


September
28  River Rat Paddle Challenge.  Ouachita River, West Monroe, Louisiana.  6.5 miles down a Class I river.  Register


October
5  Big South Fork River Dash.  Big South Fork of the Cumberland River near Whitley City, Kentucky.  A 12-mile mostly-flatwater race.

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Decompression and recalibration

I arrived home in the late afternoon Sunday after about a 12-hour process of getting myself from Hood River to Portland in a car, from Portland to Houston on an airplane, and from Houston to Memphis on another airplane.

Since then I've been slowly returning to normal activities here at home.  The house needed cleaning after the cats had eight days of shedding and scattering litter around with no one to sweep it up; and projects awaited in the workshop.

One happy coincidence has been a system of very pleasant weather that moved into the Mid South late Monday.  Since then the temperatures have been cooler and the humidity lower than usual.  If anybody would like to thank me for bringing this weather back from the Northwest with me, I'll graciously accept it.

On Tuesday I paddled for the first time since my two downwind runs of the previous Friday.  Joe and I did our usual loop of the harbor.  I was a little out of practice paddling here at home: I usually take an apple down there with me so I can eat it in the car on the way home, but on Tuesday I forgot it.

I remembered my apple when I returned to the riverfront yesterday.  After warming up and doing three 8-stroke sprints, I spent the rest of the 60-minute session doing whatever I felt like doing.  That turned out to be paddling up the Mississippi above the Hernando DeSoto Bridge, coming back downriver and playing around in the wake behind a barge rig (there wasn't much to surf there), and returning to the harbor.

What's next for me?  That's a good question.  My plan had been to race in "The Paddle Grapple" on Fontana Reservoir in western North Carolina on August 3, and then go down to Lake Lanier in Georgia to race a K2 with Christian Massow in the U.S. flatwater sprint nationals on August 7-10.

But that pretty picture is suddenly very blurry.  Just yesterday I learned that The Paddle Grapple race has been called off because of permitting problems.  And on Tuesday, when I tried to register for the flatwater nationals, I was told that registration was closed even though the event is still two weeks away--it's been a long time since I've entered an event in which governing bodies and their inherent bureaucracies are involved, and I guess I'd forgotten that two weeks' lead time isn't necessarily enough.

So, now I'm pondering my alternatives.  I'm waiting to hear back from a nationals official on whether it's still possible to get myself entered in that event.  Meanwhile, there's another race on August 3 that I actually would like very much to enter, but it's on the Ohio River up at Cincinnati, meaning I would have to a lot more driving than I'd planned to participate in two events in that August 3-10 period.

For now, I guess I won't decide anything until I know whether I can get into the nationals.  If I can't, that'll simplify the process of traveling to Cincinnati.  But I'd also been hoping to incorporate a visit to my niece and nephew over near Charlotte, North Carolina.  What to do, what to do... sigh.


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Monday photo feature

This photo was shot by a drone operated by a Mr. Tom Gomes.  It's moments after the start of the men's surf ski class at the Gorge Downwind Championships last Thursday, and over 200 paddlers are heading up the beautiful Columbia River toward the town of Hood River.  Another few hundred paddlers in other boat classes started separately.  I'm somewhere in the left half of this photo, but beyond that I have no idea which one of those boats is mine.


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Racing on the Columbia River

The Gorge Downwind Championships took place the day before yesterday.  We raced up the Columbia River (because that's the direction the wind blows) from Home Valley Park on the Washington side to the town of Hood River on the Oregon side.  The distance is approximately 14 miles or 22 kilometers.

I completed the race with a time of one hour, 54 minutes, 40 seconds.  Out of the 584 surf skis, outrigger canoes, and stand-up paddleboards entered, I was the 239th fastest.  I was 147th among the 269 solo surf ski racers.  Among the 222 male surf ski racers, I was 133rd.  I was 37th out of 70 men in the 50-59 age group of my boat class.

To see the complete results, follow the link I posted Thursday night.

The Gorge Downwind Championships is different from any other race I do during the year, and I'm not sure I can give the kind of report I typically do for other races.  So maybe the best thing I can do is just start tossing out some observations.

Downwind racing has a whole different skill set from the flatwaterish racing I mostly do.  The idea is to catch a small wave (a "run"), and then use the speed you gain on that run to advance to bigger runs.  When I paddled with Dawid Mocke on Monday, two of the mantras he kept repeating were "Small runs lead to big runs" and "When you get up some speed, take it somewhere."

I've been using my G.P.S. device all this week, and I've observed that when I'm not "on a run," my speed is typically around 6 miles per hour.  Then I'll catch a small run and move up over 7 mph.  As I move on to bigger and bigger runs, my speed increases over 8 and then over 9 mph.  I think I've hit 10 once or twice.  Eventually my run comes to an end when I stall out on the back of a wave--at this point I'm paddling uphill, basically--and my speed dives back down to 6 mph or worse.

Years ago I took a woodworking course from a really good teacher, and he explained that the most skilled woodworkers make their share of mistakes, but their mistakes are smaller, and they recover from them more quickly.  I think you can say something similar about the elite-level downwind racers: they, too, will stall out on their runs, but they do so much less often than the rest of us, and when they do, it doesn't take them much more than a stroke or two to get another run going.  And of course, they're achieving much higher speeds than I am.  Thursday's winner, Kenny Rice of Cape Town, South Africa, took just over 84 minutes to complete the course, so his average speed was around 10 mph.

Steady-paced paddling simply doesn't cut it in downwind racing.  Catching runs and sustaining them requires many bursts of explosive speed.  So downwind racers must have different priorities in their training from those of ordinary marathon racers.  Just as important is concentration, and that often makes the difference between winning and not winning.  I understand that in the late stages on Thursday, Austin Kieffer of San Diego, California, appeared to be in control of the race, but a brief lapse in concentration caused him to lose the run he was on and leave the door wide open for Rice to take the win.

My own race got off to a sluggish start.  The conditions were small in the first several kilometers, and I struggled to find bumps on which I could get runs started.  It seemed like the entire pack of racers was pulling away from me, and every time I glanced down at my G.P.S. device, I was poking along around 6 mph.  At one point I caught a good run and surged past my old racing friend Scott Cummins of Louisville, Kentucky, with whom I've always been evenly matched in our "ordinary" races back East.  But a minute later Scott regained the lead and I flailed around as he began to pull away.  I hit sort of a low point when I failed to catch a steep wave and water completely swamped my footwell and seat bucket.  My speed plummeted below 3 mph.  Self-pity began to set in: I'm just not good at this, I kept thinking.

By and by, as I moved upriver within sight of Viento State Park, the conditions began to build, and I found myself putting together some decent runs at last.  My mood began to brighten.  Just like Dawid had said, my little runs were leading to bigger runs, and soon I was getting ride after ride on beautiful glassy-smooth swells.  Now when I glanced down at the G.P.S., my speed was in the sevens and eights a lot more often than the sixes.  Suddenly I was motivated and I eagerly attacked every opportunity to "take my speed somewhere."

The limitations of my fitness became apparent as I passed Wells Island: my top gear abandoned me.  But I was still able to paddle strong, and as the surf conditions gave way to smaller chop I tried to keep the boat gliding toward the finish line.  In the last several hundred meters I was right next to a guy named Sean Hulscher of West Vancouver, British Columbia, and we had a spirited fight to the finish with him clipping me by one second.

My race was anything but perfect, but it was a lot better than last year's effort, and I'm happy about that.  There are certainly aspects of downwind racing that I haven't even begun to learn yet, such as recognizing where in the river or ocean the fastest runs can be found.  But that's just more stuff to have fun with in the future.

Yesterday I was suitably tired from the big race, but with forecasts predicting the wind to die down this weekend, I knew I should get in a couple of runs from Viento to Hood River while the conditions were there.  So I did.  There's an area of the river on the Washington side known as Swell City because of the big juicy swells that form there.  (I would argue that it's also called Swell City because, well, gee... it's just swell.)  We had to skip most of Swell City on race day because the finish line was positioned over against the Oregon shore, but yesterday I dove right in there, and it was sweet, especially on my first run.  I was dead-dog tired, but the surfing was so, so good.  Achingly good.


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Gorge race results

The results of the 2019 Gorge Downwind Championships are posted here.  You'll have to scroll down a bit to find my name, but don't worry, it's there.  Actually, there's a box in the top left-hand corner of the page where you can type in my name or my bib number (368) and it'll take you right to my result.

As for how the race went, I'll get to that later.  I'm too exhausted to produce a full-blown report right now.


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Fighting fatigue and getting ready to race

When I paddled with Dawid Mocke on Monday he had his Go Pro camera hooked to his life jacket, and a couple of times he pointed it at me.  Here are a couple of brief clips he sent me:




Yesterday I felt absolutely fried from Monday's paddling, but with everything I've got invested in the trip out here, I felt I had to go out and do at least one downwind run.  I went out with the intention of keeping the intensity low, but that's easier said than done in a downwind setting.  I tried to take some rest intervals in between chasing runs, and work on some little things.  I held up okay for a while but spent the last third of the session practically floating along.

Here's a video clip of one of my best moments out there:



I woke up today still feeling rather tired.  Once again I felt the need for a break but also felt the need to be out on the river lapping up as much downwind goodness as possible while I'm out here.  Then the announcement came down from the race organizers that after studying the wind forecast, they have decided that tomorrow will be our race day.  Just like that, my plan for today became simple.  I would do an easy paddle and otherwise rest today in preparation for tomorrow's competition.  Then I'll be able to spend Friday and Saturday surfing until I drop.

I went down to the riverfront in the late morning and paddled there for 40 minutes.  I did four 12-stroke sprints and otherwise paddled easy.  Since then I've been trying to take it easy, eat good, and stay hydrated.  My biggest challenge for tomorrow will be disregarding all the hype and hoopla surrounding this event and all the world-class athletes walking around, and just go out and have a good 14-mile paddle on the river.


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Monday photo feature

Ulli Sherer snapped this photo as I departed Viento State Park with tandem partner Dawid Mocke this afternoon.  That's me in the stern seat with Dawid in the bow.  As we navigated the stretch of the Columbia River from Viento up to Hood River, Dawid gave me a whole boatload of downwind paddling advice that I will spend many moons turning over in my mind.


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Starting off with a bang in the Columbia Gorge

I landed in Portland just before midnight Saturday, and yesterday morning I joined up with Michiganers Marie MacNee, Michael Meredith, and Ulli Sherer for the hour-long drive east to the town of Hood River.  The four of us are sharing a rental house not far from the race site down on the bank of the Columbia River.  Also in our house are Ulli's daughter Brie Sherer; Kristina Meskauskaite of Melbourne, Australia; and Sally Wallick of Kelowna, British Columbia.

It was warm and sunny yesterday afternoon, but this morning we started the week with cool, sort of rainy conditions.  Having watched the weather forecast all last week, I believe that not-so-hot temperatures might be the norm while I'm here.  I'm generally okay with that, having just left triple-digit (Fahrenheit) heat index conditions back in the Mid South.

There's definitely a social aspect to this week's activities, and I'm looking forward to visiting with friends old and new, many of whom I likely won't see again the rest of the year.  But I also want this to be a good week for paddling.  What I don't want is to look back on this week later and think, "I could have gotten in one or two more good downwind runs if I hadn't stayed up past midnight drinking beer," or "I might have raced better if I'd stayed a little more focused," and so on.  So, I'll be balancing the fun stuff with the athletic stuff, and I hope I'll do a good job of getting my rest and resisting some of the FOMO ("fear of missing out") impulses on the social side.

As if reading my mind, the Mocke Paddling Company of Fish Hoek, South Africa, posted the following message on their Face Book page this morning:

Race Happy!  What does it mean to race happy?  When one lines up to compete it's natural to run through all factors that could influence your performance.  Unfortunately, many of these factors are variables beyond your control--i.e. weather conditions, other competitors, official decisions.  It's easy to get our minds bogged down by these.  Then, of course, there is the psychological need to perform well which, when done for the wrong reasons like searching for significance, can actually be a negative driver.
But to Race Happy means to adopt an attitude of gratitude and thankfulness.  You are privileged to be able to line up and compete, you are on the start line and so much went into getting there.  Now show up, give your best, and enjoy it!  Be grateful for it.
RACE HAPPY!

So... that was my attitude as I embarked on this first full day in the Columbia Gorge.  And a busy day it would be.  Job One was to walk down to the riverfront and go through the check-in process for the race.  Job Two was to pick up my rental boat from the Epic Kayaks personnel on duty.  Only then could I go about the business of paddling.  My plan was to do two downwind runs from Viento State Park to Hood River, and I wanted to get the first one in sooner rather than later, because I was signed up for a four o'clock session in a tandem surf ski with--speaking of the Mocke Paddling Company--world-class racer Dawid Mocke.

For the first run I got together with a couple of friends who had flown out from New England: Greg Lesher of South Hamilton, Massachusetts, and Tim Dwyer of Jamestown, Rhode Island.  We rode the shuttle to Viento and were on the water a little after one o'clock.  My boat for this week is a V10 Sport ski, and I believe I have made the right decision to go with a more stable boat than what I use back home, even if it is supposedly a touch slower.  Last year, paddling the V10L I'd brought on top of my car, I was frequently sitting on braces when I should have been paddling.  But today I hardly had to brace at all.  I still have volumes to learn in downwind racing skill--there still seems to be so much going on out there in the waves that I can't really express in writing at this point--but that extra bit of stability liberated me to be aggressive and keep trying to advance from one run to the next.  Greg and Tim are both strong paddlers and I was able to keep them in sight, and sometimes even lead, all the way to the finish.

I was a bit fatigued after this first run but I felt I had enough still in the tank for my session with Dawid.  I walked back up to the house for a quick snack and then got back down to the race site just in time for our four o'clock meeting.

Dawid Mocke is among the top surf ski racers in the world.  There were a few years a decade or so ago when it seemed that he was unbeatable.  Since then a handful of other racers have caught up to him, but he remains an athlete whom nobody counts out.

I'm not going to get too specific about the things Dawid told me today because he offers several online video courses to which each of us can subscribe and study on his or her own (I intend to subscribe myself to solidify my understanding of what we covered today).  But I will say that he provided some articulation of some of the concepts I'd been sensing intuitively, and pointed out many things I hadn't yet thought of as well.

Furthermore, Dawid is--how else can I put it?--a beast.  When he puts the hammer down, he really puts it down.  Paddling in the bow seat, the South African would occasionally spot a run that I, paddling solo, would have no hope of catching, and throw down a savage sprint that made me reach into reserves I didn't know I had to keep up with.  By the time we reached the finish at Hood River I was practically catatonic, and I've spent this evening slowly recovering.

Oh well... with the race possibly happening as early as Thursday, today was the day to blow myself out.  With any luck I'll get a good night's sleep and have a more flexible schedule to pace myself into race day.


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Ready to head for the Northwest

I got a scare in the first half of this week when I started feeling some sharp pain in my right wrist.  I don't know for sure what caused it, but my strongest suspicion is that it happened when I was moving that big heavy table to the front of my workshop so it would be ready for the client to pick up Tuesday morning.  The pickup happened as scheduled, and while the table turned out beautiful, if I may say so, I'm glad to have it out of my life.

The pain was at its worst on Tuesday.  I did an easy paddle in the harbor with Joe, and while the injury didn't directly hamper my paddling, I could nevertheless feel it, and I worried about how it would affect me in the more challenging conditions of the Columbia River Gorge next week.  Not knowing whether the condition was a short-term thing or a long-term one was the greatest cause of anxiety.

Now, two days later, I'm feeling optimistic.  By yesterday morning I could tell that the pain had abated some, and even though it's not gone yet today, I believe it's moving in the right direction.  I've been taking ibuprofen since Tuesday, and I think it's helped.  This morning I did a set of ten 12-stroke sprints at two-minute intervals, and even at maximum intensity the injury didn't bother me.

Also this week I did rounds of the strength routine Monday and Wednesday.  Now, I intend to take the next three days completely off from training activities--that was the plan even before this injury occurred.  I'm in for a lot of hard paddling all next week on the Columbia River, so I think a planned break now is a good idea.

The thoughtful folks at Outdoors, Inc., knew just what I needed for my trip: a neon-yellow hat that will be highly visible out in the Gorge and, I hope, save my head from being taken off by a kiteboarder or windsurfer:

Company president Joe Royer delivered it himself.  I'll wear it with pride!


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Monday photo feature

Barring some horrible disaster, a week from now I'll be paddling in the Columbia River Gorge on the state line between Oregon and Washington.  Some athletes are already there getting ready for the big race at the end of next week.  Long-time racing friend Chris Hipgrave of Bryson City, North Carolina, posted a video online of one of his downwind runs, and what you see above is a screen shot.  It looks like there's a nice wave forming up off the starboard bow.  Beyond that wave you can see a kiteboarder sailing along--surf ski paddlers aren't the only ones who are drawn to the legendary winds of the Columbia Gorge.


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The surf's not up on the Memphis riverfront

I've been dealing with some pain in the left side of my neck this weekend.  It's a pinched nerve or some such thing, caused by sleeping on it wrong, or maybe by dealing with that massive table I've been working on.  I get something like this several times a year.  It'll run its course.  But until it does, I'm hating it.  It doesn't interfere with paddling, but it makes the rest of my daily existence much less pleasant than it should be.

Yesterday I headed out in Joe's V10 Sport surf ski hoping to find some wake-surfing action out on the Mississippi.  But there was none: the only barge traffic was a rig heading upstream far up the river, out of my reach.  My body was sort of tired from the week's strength work and table-wrestling, so I decided it was just as well that I make it a semi-recovery day.  I made a couple of nice spirited ferries across the river and then returned to the harbor and paddled easy back to the dock.

I felt fresher in the boat this morning and I headed back out to the river, thinking surely I couldn't be unlucky with the barge traffic a third straight time.  But in fact, I could: the river was empty as far as the eye could see.  I paddled all the way down to the big bend south of downtown and saw no powerful commercial vessels of any kind.  Now I had to paddle back up the river to the harbor, so today's paddle turned out to be more of a long-distance slog than I'd intended.  I threw in several hard surges to make sure I wasn't just practicing going slow, but it wasn't as much fun as surfing.  The next wave I surf may well be in the Pacific Northwest.

Speaking of which, on Friday I started doing some packing--gonna be a spendthrift and pay the fees to check two bags.  The yellow and black one is for paddles and whatever paddling clothing/gear I can cram in there, and the green one is for street clothes and stuff:

My flight is scheduled to take off Saturday evening.  So, yes, I started packing eight days in advance. I'm not getting excited about my trip or anything.


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Training continues apace

After the fairly substantial weekend paddling I'd done, I was ready for a recovery paddle when I went down to the riverfront on Tuesday.  I paddled easy for 60 minutes.  The Mississippi River is still very high here (35.5 feet on the Memphis gauge Tuesday), and I was able to paddle in the slack water of the flooded Greenbelt Park.

I went back downtown yesterday and got out Joe's V10 Sport surf ski with the hope of doing a "play" workout on some towboat wakes.  But after warming up and doing three 8-stroke sprints in the harbor, I headed out onto the mighty Mississippi and found no barge traffic whatsoever.  Maybe the towboat pilots were all observing the national holiday.  I paddled all the way down to the big bend in the river below the Memphis-Arkansas Bridge just to make sure there were no northbound rigs approaching; there were none.

So, a "work" workout it would be.  I headed back upriver along the Arkansas bank and commenced a set of twelve 30-second sprints at three-minute intervals.  This is a workout I've done a lot in recent years; I usually do ten sprints, but yesterday I stretched it out since I've got a downwind race looming that will require a lot of short sprints.  Sometimes this workout feels brutal, and sometimes it feels good; yesterday was one of the better days.  The fatigue was definitely getting to me in the last three or four sprints, but my form held up well.

I did the strength routine Monday, Wednesday, and today.  I'd say my muscular health has been mostly good lately, though my current woodworking project has provided some occasional strain: I'm making a table with some very heavy oak slabs that the client provided.


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Monday photo feature

Adam Davis shot this photo during our trip around the Loosahatchie Bar yesterday.  It looks like I could be waxing eloquent about something, but that can't be the case because I never wax eloquent.

As you can see at the bottom of the photo, Adam's G.P.S. device measured the distance at 10.5 miles. That seems about right to me.  In the past I've measured the trip at 12.6 miles on my own G.P.S. device, but that's starting and finishing about a mile farther north in the harbor than Adam started and finished yesterday.


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